Article syndication
Article syndication is when other sites republish an article that first ran somewhere else, with the original publisher's permission.
Article syndication is when another website republishes an article that first appeared somewhere else, usually in full and with permission. A trade magazine might run your founder's column a week after it appears on your blog. A news agency's story might appear on hundreds of local news sites.
For a brand, it's a way to reach readers you'd never get on your own site. The catch is that the same article now lives at several addresses, and the copy on the bigger site can outrank yours.
Doing it well
Syndication is normal and allowed. Google's spam policies say news sites carrying syndicated stories from other publishers are fine. Problems come when you lose track of which version search engines treat as the original.
A few habits help. Publish on your own site first. Ask the partner to link back to your original near the top. Ask them to add a canonical tag pointing at your page, or to keep their copy out of search results with a noindex tag. If they won't do either, a shortened version with a link to the full article is a fair middle ground.
Syndication and AI answers
AI platforms that search the web will happily cite whichever copy they find first, and that's often the one on the larger site. That isn't always bad. If the copy names you and says the right things about you, an answer can still repeat it.
For example, Fernhill Coffee's study of supermarket coffee freshness is picked up by a food magazine. Answers to "how fresh is supermarket coffee?" start citing the magazine, not Fernhill. Because the magazine kept Fernhill's name in the headline and linked to the study, the answers still name Fernhill as the source.
In AnswerOrbit
Sources shows every page the answers used for your prompts, including syndicated copies of your content on other sites. The Pages tab lists single pages, so you can see which copy the platforms prefer. See Sources.